Saturday, February 25, 2012

Boggles my mind

The mainstream Republicans won't support Ron Paul because, while he is the most intelligent and principled of the candidates, he's kind of old and funny looking and his defense policy would kill us all.

Our current global network of forward basis was our strategy to contain Soviet aggression in the fase of their possession of long range bombers and later, short-range nuclear missiles. Later it allowed us to project force to their periphery, where we countered their attempts to turn countries like Viet Nam into satellite states.

Now, although there are certainly tactical benefits, the majority of our bases only serve to stage peacekeepers in various 3rd world hellholes or defend Western Europe. In total, they reduce our national security for two reasons.

First, the greatest existential threat to the United States is its overspending. Our foreign bases, and particularly the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, cost us incredible sums of money. Of course, the media is pretending we left Iraq so they can get Obama another turn, and in fact our presence there is reduced, but the money continues to bleed out.

Second, a few of our bases antagonize the natives to no end. Saudi Arabia neither needs nor deserves our protection, so why do we have troops there? To support Kuwait? Which Supports Iraq? Where we have no national interest anyway?

I was somewhat ambivalent on the invasion of Iraq, but it had some tactical advantages. Now it does not. The current withdrawal timetable, which was negotiated by bush, is fine with me, although I would like to see all of our soldiers withdrawn except for the embassy.

Afghanistan? We owe them nothing. If they want to live in peace and freedom they're perfectly capable of doing it. They simply choose not to. It's not Afghanistan vs the Taliban - the Taliban is made up of Afghans.

The last vestiges of American culture also face a threat from the continued immigration from less civilized nations. Our troops would be better used defending the Mexican border than the Iranian border.